Hints for Planning a Network Gaming Marathon? 439
"We have prior experience with private weekend-long gaming parties (with 20-30 people) a handful of times per year at the homes of attendees, and usually they conclude with few problems. However, we are planning on this session being bigger and more public, hopefully upwards of 120 seats. Although we have experience with smaller gatherings, we generally know all attendees, and have little experience with larger, public gaming marathons.
What did you do for advertising? Is it more effective to reach the intended audience by advertising on the radio, TV, internet, or billboard? What can you do about the rare, unmanageable, lunatic gamer? How have you handled cheaters (aimbots, wall-hackers, etc.)? Have you brought in sponsors to help offset the cost? Has there been technical support for the non-tech savvy? If so, was it free, or included in the admission cost? There are other questions, but I'll stop there.".
Make sure you have (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Make sure you have (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Make sure you have (Score:3, Funny)
And someone willing and ready to clean them every few hours. Those gamers that are able to place a round into the head of another player within 50 ms from 1000 feet are commonly unable to get their piss into a foot wide hole right in front of them.
If there is even one woman there, make sure there is a bathroom designated 'women only'. There's no need to dunk her into the filth of gamers on a weekend marathon.
Re:Make sure you have (Score:3, Insightful)
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I doubt anyone will use it.
Re:What? (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, they'd probably have to be blind to take the gig...
Really good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
furthermore physically and digitally secure all the equipment you provide. there are always some dumbasses trying to sabotage or steal stuff
DHCP and BOFH (Score:5, Insightful)
Just make sure the BOFH has the nicest kit and plenty of beer.
Re:DHCP and BOFH (Score:5, Informative)
A) Actually, I would strongly recommend AGAINST using DHCP. If it worked like it was supposed to, it would seem to be ideal for that kind of setup. Unfortunately, it never does. Somehow, with the combination of Win98/ME/2000/XP and Linux computers all stuck on the same LAN, there are always some computers that just won't get an IP correctly, and cant see the other computers. (You might be able to figure out the problem with some driver or something after hours of messing with it, but you don't want to spend that time.) The most efficient method we ended up using is giving everyone a small piece of paper as soon as they walk in, which contains:
1) Their name (real and in-game name)
2) IP address they are to use
3) workgroup name that everyone is to use
4) Table number that they are to sit at
5) the IP/computer-name of the "game" servers
6) the IP/computer-name of the "file" servers
(you could even go as far as numbering the seats at the tables, but you have to take into consideration that some people have gigantic monitors, or have shorter NIC cables, are really fat, etc., so you might want to let them pick their positions within the table.)
Everyone having this information cuts down on the repeated questions immensely. Along with these sheets to hand out, you have a master list which contains:
1) each person's name (real and in-game)
2) IP address they are using
3) Table they're sitting at
4) whether they've checked in yet
5) whether they've paid their money or not
B) The master list can be a file on your computer at the check-in area, or it can be a paper list with spaces at the end to hand-write in names of people who show up. Of course you also the need extra sheets with blank name spots to hand to those people too. If the master list is on paper, IT STAYS IN ONE SPOT THE WHOLE TIME, no exceptions. Loose paper and CDs get lost in a blackhole in seconds at a large lan party.
C) I highly recommend requiring people to sign up before the first day of the event. You need to know how much space you need, hubs/routers, cables, table/network layout, etc. Unless you work at a computer store where you can borrow a bunch of extra equip on short notice, you definitely need a good estimate of attendees. You can still accept people showing up at the door with no notice (there WILL be some), but it removes a lot of grief if you've already planned for them.
D) Don't plan on playing any games yourself. Now this depends on how many people you actually have working with you, but with 120 people under your supervision, you will always need at least 4 people to be "available" for all the little issues that come up. Now if you've got 10 of you running the thing, then you can rotate and still get some hours of play in, but you will be playing a lot less than people who are just there for the ride.
E) Make everyone handle their own food deals. It always seems like a good idea to get money from everyone and then order 20 pizzas, but with more than 15 people you end up with people who can't eat certain kinds of foods, or who dont like whatever it is that most other people are getting (pizza), or brought their own food and dont want to pay, or get out of paying somehow but then still eat the food (ie. you collected all money on the 1st day and some people only show up for the 2nd day), want to eat at a different time so there's either no food yet or it's cold/stale etc. You can have some common snacks/drinks included in the cover price, but that's it. You don't want to have to include 2-3 days worth of meals in the cover price, people will balk at it and not show up, even though they will be spending that amount of money on food themselves anyway.
Make up a list of directions to the nearest restaurants and phone numbers of places tha
Re:DHCP and BOFH (Score:5, Informative)
[...security blah blah]
With 120+ people, odds are there will be several "Mister Angry's" [lotl.cc], and the only reason they dont annihilate the person sitting next to them at smaller LAN parties is that almost everyone there knows who they are, and/or where they live. If they're stuck in a room full of strangers, after the 10th time they get blown away by a teammate, someone's monitor is going thru the wall. Be ready to jump on it as soon as they stand up and start yelling.
G) Make Headphones Mandatory. No exceptions. If they 'forgot' to bring theirs, they have to play with no sound. You can't have 100 people all showing off their sub-woofers the whole time, it will be mass chaos because no one will be able to hear themselves think. If you want to be helpful/entrepreneurial, buy a bunch of cheap headphones beforehand and sell them to people who dont have any. You should also bring lots of extra (long) network cables and power strips to sell/loan to the people. Without fail, at least 2 person in a 30 person LAN party will FORGET their own NIC cable or powerstrip and won't be able to play. With 120+ people, you'd have to assume at least 10 or so.
H) Post a list of games that will be played at the event, and try to loosely schedule times to announce that "everyone is playing Counter-strike now", or whatever game you kids play these days heheh. Otherwise you will have lots of little factions of people who want to play a certain game, and with 120 people you'll have 20 groups of 6 people each playing their own favorite game. Defeats the purpose of having a large lan party and everyone will feel that the event sucks because they could play with more people at home on the net. You don't have to be too strict about it, but someone who is "in charge" is going to have to be a negotiator between the main factions, and get everyone to agree to "play BF1942 for 3 hours, then we'll play Counterstrike for 3 hours", etc. With 120 people, you can increase the number of simultaneous games being played to 2 or 3 probably, and still have full servers.
Also, if you have the hardware to spare, run dedicated servers for the popular games yourselves. Otherwise, you have 5 people who all start running servers for the same game at the same time, and people get split up into little groups again, waiting around for 'everyone else to join the server'. If you can't/dont want to run the servers for all the games, have some way for everyone to easily see the IP/names of the "officially sanctioned" servers, even tho it's just some random guy's computer actually running it. Like write big on a chalkboard or use a projection screen which most conference rooms have.
I) Download the latest patches/update files for ALL the games that anyone might play during the party and set up a file server to share them. Make sure you include the address(es) to access these servers on the little sheets you hand out. Assigning everyone an IP/table and giving them a central location to get patches will cut down on HOURS of people wandering between tables asking for CDs or the folder names on each others' shared drives. Actually, you'll probably want multiple servers doing this, but make sure everyone has the addresses of them. Now that BitTorrent is available, it would probably help dramatically reduce the load on the server's hard drive, which is usually the bottleneck in these situations.
Actually now that I think about it, if you've got the time/money/CDburner, you'd probably be better off burning all those files onto a CD and handing them out to people with their sign-in sheets. (We never actually tried this.) Only problem is, even if you only stick to 4-5 games thru-out the whole weekend, one or more of them will have a new patch released between the time that you announce the event and the day it actually happens, so you'd either have to burn them all the day before, or risk having some of them obsoleted. Dunno, something to think a
Re:DHCP and BOFH (Score:5, Informative)
J) If you can pull it off, go and setup the tables in the room you're planning the event for, well before you announce it to the public. You want to get all the logistics of where chairs will go and how many hubs you need and where all the NIC cables will go and which switches they will plug in to, etc. LONG before people start showing up. You might setup half the tables and then realise that "Hey, there's no way in hell we can fit 120 people in here!" or "Hey, these 5 tables here that are supposed to plug into this hub here are more than 100 feet from it!" or "We've got too many hubs on this chain, boo packet loss!"
K) Sponsors: they're good if you can get them, but usually they'll only offer free stuff that they already provide (like a software games/package or free net access), which you can use as contest or random drawin prizes, but it's rare to find a company that will just give you cash in exchange for their banner hanging up or whatever. It's worth asking around for it, but plan on having to cover all of the costs of the event from the money you collect at the door and whatever you're willing to spend on it.
Also, on the food issue that I mentioned above: if it's a larger hotel that has restaurants in it, you can provide the menus of them and tell people to order from there, as long as you make it clear to the employees beforehand that NO ONE is allowed to charge to the "room" for their orders.
Well that's all for now. I'm sure there's more but other people will fill in the gaps. Have fun!
Re:DHCP and BOFH (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why exactly they don't work, I'm just telling you from our experiences there's always issues with it. Sometimes you have some jackass WinXP Home computer that's trying to act as a "home internet gateway" for all computers on the LAN with a non-existent internet connection. Or you have NT/2000/XP Pro boxes that win elections with your master browser because they're faster than your server, or they are giving out their own set of DHCP addresses to whoever talks to them first
Re:Really good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really good idea (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Really good idea (Score:3, Informative)
food (Score:3, Insightful)
Lan Party setup tips (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lan Party setup tips (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lan Party setup tips (Score:3, Funny)
Thats a mighty truckload of copper in them cables.
Caffeine!!! (Score:3, Funny)
be sure of licensing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:be sure of licensing... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:free games (Score:2)
From the website:
BZFlag won best in class for "Best Free Multiplayer Action Game" in the HappyPenguin competition.
Re:be sure of licensing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, it wasn't free. It was paid for with taxes.
Re:be sure of licensing... (Score:3, Funny)
Sometimes it's worth paying 40 bucks for a game that has awesome 3D visuals and good game play... I'm hooked on BF1942 right now...
lanparty.com (Score:5, Informative)
weekend lan party? (Score:4, Insightful)
after about 12 hours i was pretty much needing a shower just from being around so many unwashed geeks.
Re:weekend lan party? (Score:3, Funny)
Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
Note (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and make sure to devote a couple hours to mp3 swapping.
Save the Bandwidth! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see... (Score:2)
Alot of stuff can go wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The main thing to remember is that it IS work, not fun, if you want to do it for fun your in the wrong bizz. Also remember security, are you capable of throwing out people if needed. How about alcohol, fights? Warez? Whats your policy? Tech support, people always need help with tcp/ip, remember to always have a few people on call to help people. Power recheck power, recheck power again, i can't stress this enough, when ppl start rolling in and they put their machines on, arr...
Also remember that personal faulty equipment like a coffe cooker thats broken can shut down the power to 20-30 machines depending on your setup. Whos fault is this if a computer breaks? (it has happened several times) Do you pay? Be sure to have the answers.
Pep Pill Boy?-Pep boys-pills-Beverly Sills-Oh boy. (Score:2)
Mike
Nice touch (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nice touch (Score:4, Funny)
Women? What women?
Name (Score:5, Funny)
Call it "extravaLANza." I dunno. I just made that up. Just name it anything that doesn't invoke images of sweat and toil.
Power consumption (Score:2)
Make sure they have spare fuses and candles.
Re:Power consumption (Score:2, Funny)
my two cents (Score:4, Informative)
Cheaters and such (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite a diffrent thing when you can look at the guy next to you and see him wallhacking, or aimbotting - it's pretty blatant. He'd kick a nice swift kick in the head, and be labeled a lamer.
One thing about planning large scale parties - don't let people without PCs in, unless you know them well.
Being stuck at a LAN party without a PC will lead to the pickpocketing and other such mischief that will give your lan party a bad name.
Also, make up a bunch of "packets" of info. Inside the packet, have a little map with the location to the bathrooms, the name of the game server, the IP they can use (or if it's DHCP), and even their place at the table if you have assigned seating.
Make sure to have a couple of 55gallon garbage cans handy, and assign someone as the garbage man - making sure the trash cans arent overflowing, spills are cleaned up, etc - trust me, this is a must.
There's so much more info and hints out there, I'll let some others answer it.
Hell, every thing you need to know about it has been graciously already written for you by lanparty.com [lanparty.com].
It's called, simply enough, "The Guide" [lanparty.com] and covers everything pretty well. Read it.
Re:Cheaters and such (Score:5, Insightful)
The best way to implement this is to provide ID badges. You can buy the packets/cords/clips in a kit at any office store for around $20 per 100. Then just print something official looking and stick them in each one. Tell people that they need this badge visible at all times to be readmitted. Trust me, all kinds of lowlifes show up when they know that there will be $$thousands of hardware laying around a single chaotic room.
mod parent up, cuz i cant (Score:5, Informative)
If you're gonna have a bunch of gamers over, (Score:2)
The gamer's choice for over caffination.
Working on this myself (Score:5, Informative)
Go and talk with the manager at your local software shop. Chances are they'll be happy to place a flyer on the counter, and they may even be willing to help sponsor.
Give yourself at least 3 months planning time. You're gonna need it.
Set a minimum age and stick to it. We decided on 16, no exceptions.
Make it clear that cheaters will be evicted with no refunds.
HAVE SOME PRIZES - very important. Best Case, MVP, winner of tournaments. Sponsors can really help with this one.
For networking we ended up getting several cheap 24 port Dlink switches with gigabit uplink, then had an 8 port gigabit switch that they all headed into.
Get some volunteers to help with setup and takedown. Offer them a free spot, but make sure you can trust them to stay afterwards.
Keep the rules understated. Make having fun the priority but let everyone know on a basic level that the rules are there and will be enforced. Anarchy is not a good thing with respect to a good LAN party.
Have FUN! I plan on doing so.
128??? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:128??? (Score:5, Funny)
Aftermath (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget to hire a professional cleaning crew, for cleaning up after the 90% of gamers who can't hit the trashcan if it's five inches from their hand, and insist on messy food.
Also, quadruple the estimated time to pack up before the cleaning crew can do their job.
Other than that, whoever brings extra power strips, hubs and longer cat5 cables is going to be a hero. No arranger in the history of gamingkind has ever provided enough or long enough cables.
one long LAN (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, LAN party experience tells me a few things. Make sure you have a few knownledgable network guys to set the thing up. Make sure you have a game plan for the configuration! Avoid DHCP if at all possible, it's much better to have a well thought out addressing scheme.
Power has always been an issue at the lans I attend. So make sure the facility you are going to has appropriate power.
Cooling is big. Lotsa computers can make a room very toasty.
Food and beverage consumption is a biggy at LANs, so charge people admitance fee to help cover the costs.
Don't be afraid to through ass holes out, a LAN that big will attract some unwanted guests.
Have a few spare gaming rigs that people can use if they don't have their own.
Also, remind people to watch out for their belongings. The LANs i attend are small (30-40) gatherings of friends, yours won't be.
I'm sure there are a million other things I'm forgetting, I'll post more if i can think of it.
Power (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what to do about networking for that scale. Gets scary at anything above 40-50 people. Our parties run between 35 and 50 people and we have some serious networking hardware borrowed from a company one of the guys works for.
Also, we have sponsors. Lots. We have several local companies sponsor with trinkets and t-shirts for door prizes as well as some big names sponsor with certains CPUs and graphics cards that they make. We actually got an entire server from one company. Awesome box too, not some throw-away.
Once you get one good sponsor, that validates the rest of them to do so. Also, we got onto TV on the largest news station in the city. That helps. They were doing a human interest story on gaming. Just so happened we have a good website that was easily found on a search engine.
Utilities CD (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you're playing some free games, slap them on there too.
Some suggestions (Score:2, Informative)
- 3'x3' desktop space (so make sure all your stuff fits on top of that or below)
- 1 120 VAC power jack (so bring your own power strip(s))
- No speakers (headphones only)
- Bring your own software
- Detail recommended software and network config
- No food or smoking in the game area
From a large (1500) lan party in Wash DC, IIRC they had issues with lan cabling, so BYOB 50ft of cat5 might not be bad either. Lighting could be an issue. And of cou
C4H5N20 - No need for sponsors (Score:2)
Step 2: Mark them up to $.50-$.75
Step 3: Wait for gamers to grow agitated and tired.
Step 4: Sell caffenated drinks to help recoup the costs of your marathon.
Re:C4H5N20 - No need for sponsors (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawyers (Score:2)
Bring some damned good defense attorneys...
Set start times (Score:5, Informative)
IANAL blah blah blah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically you just need to establish what is acceptable and more importantly, what won't be tolerated and will get you thrown out. Things like cheating in games, rampant piracy, or conduct that is disruptive to another player (like bashing them over the head with your keyboard because you are angry at them for camping) should probably be prohibited by the agreement.
You might also what to establish under what circumstances (if any) a refund will be given.
Depending on the size of the gathering and the amount of money you are investing, you may want to consult with a lawyer about this agreement or at least try to find something boilerplate that you can adapt. The purpose of the agreement is to give yourself prior justification for the unfortunate possibility of having to kick someone out of your event.
Again, IANAL so maybe I'm completely wrong here, but if it were me I would at least investigate this kind of stuff and I'm guessing that this angle is easy to overlook when planning for an event like this.
nerdsexfests! (Score:4, Insightful)
anyway, these nerdsexfests grew longer and longer. we did a two once and i'd say the most important thing about having a long lan party is *pace*...
Pace your playing (don't stay up *all* night), pace your food (junk food all day => feel shitty, want to leave)
We often interleaved playing actual sports to get our blood flowing...
and of course, there is nothing like good ol' loud techno blasting to keep everybody psyched...
pace, my friend
Make sure you have (Score:4, Funny)
My experiences (Score:3, Informative)
The first problem occured on the opening day. 70% of the people on the LAN was unable to get a IP address. The problem turned out to be that we were assigned too few IP addresses.
The sysadmins on the school network we were using were however kind enough to give us an extra subnet, since the school was closed
Make sure you have enough IP addresses!
Once the network was up and running, everything worked almost smoothly, except for the occational few who had problems with their network card, graphic card, hard disk etc.
Since we didn't have a tech crew to handle these people, most of our spare time was used to help people fix their personal computer problems.
Make sure you have a tech crew to handle such problems!
We had a small kiosk inside the building where we sold food, beverages and soap. After a few days of sitting in front of the computer without sleep, you need to shower. The last couple of days the LAN party smelled like sh*it. It was horrible to enter the building when you had been outside for a while.
Make sure everyone is clean and shower at least twice!
In advance, we were planning on updating our webpage with stuff that was going to happen (competitions, results, general information etc.). It failed. The webpage was too difficult to update, so noone bothered to do it, since there was more important things to do (like downloading stuff and helping people).
Make sure your webpage can be updated in a second (PHP/MySQL solution preferrably).
These were the 4 biggest problems we had. Except for this, things turned out pretty well I think
Money. (Score:2)
Make sure your party will pay for itself. You can do this by a cover charge, or by getting crates of pop and munchies from costco and reselling them, or what-have-you, but make sure that money in is greater than money out.
Rules of thumb from similar events fr
stable (dedicated) game servers (Score:2, Informative)
STOP AIM (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep the internet connection (whether it be modem or router) near to where you sit, and have it unplugged except for patches. Why? Because a lot of people are morons, it's hard to find an ideal group. One time, we wanted to play NWN but the kid who had the server cracked (unfortuantely people who buy games like me are a minority and thus we needed a cracked server to play) said that he "needed" to talk on AIM. And no, he couldn't tell us where we could find the crack.
This has happened dozens of times to me before I wised up. One kid had his semi-girlfriend dump him on AIM at a lan and he spent the rest of the night being a whining pussy. Like I wanna hear about that when I'm at a party. Story in point, crap like AIM and mindless websurfing can convince people to forget that they're there to play games, and in smaller LANs that's a real bitch when you're trying to fill up a server.
Or maybe I'm just anal about this?
Re:STOP AIM (Score:5, Funny)
Networking in hotels (Score:2)
T
Testing...Testing...Testing (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone else think.. (Score:2)
Judging from the current state of AlephOne [bungie.org] maybe I _can_ actually get some multiplayer carnage.. after all these exams are done. Damn you quarter system! Damn you to hell!
Switching / Network Topology (Score:2)
It wouldn't hurt to have all your switches know STP (spanning tree protocol) to avoid very nasty situations that can occur.
Power! and umm... stuff. (Score:3, Informative)
Make sure you have a phone book [pizza is good mmkay]
Make sure you state the RULES beforehand, so everyone is on the same page:
- Alcohol? if minors are attending, it's probably best to set a policy banning it
- Speakers? Speakers are fun, but at a lan party, they can be disruptive. They DO help if you're doing more than gaming [I actually watched the Matrix for the first time at a 3 day lan party like this at 2 am after playing quake for 36 hours. whoa.]
- Minors? While adults can choose to stay up for 3 days in a communal sleeping area, minors make for a sticky situation
Suggestions:
give a list of things to bring; sleeping bags are good, commonly forgotten things like surge protectors, power cables, CDs are good.
Bring extra power cables/surge protectors
Specific questions:
Advertising: put it on lanparty.com a few months in advance. slashdot is also good, but maybe you should tell us where the hell it is.
crazy gamer: usually with 120 people, 1 crazy guy can be contained if anything by sheer numbers. If anything, cops are good if they're breaking stuff. Keeping 'officials' awake and patroling helps disuade thievery.
cheaters/lamers: What else do you do to lamers?!? beat them with a lead pipe until they stop cheating.
costs: charge a fee for attendance; charge less for pre-registration. Only use sponsors for prizes, though charge them ahead of time if they'd like to come and setup a booth or advertising.
tech support: abso-frickin-lutely. Most gamers are computer savvy, but not necissarily network savvy. With that many machines you'll likely need a dedicated network guy/girl or a few non-dedicated. Tech support should be free! materials like power cables and network cables should be free [and retrieved afterwards if possible] though things like network cards, extra mice should be for sale. ALSO: the network guy/girl should not provide technical support beyond getting the guy's computer on the network. It's not your problem.
The nearly ULTIMATE GUIDE to having a LAN PARTY (Score:3, Informative)
You have two enemies - well, three or more if someone in the crew is married - when holding an event such as this.
1. The lack of experience of some people who come and hope to immediately set up their computers and start fragging
2. The lack of proper facilities for the enjoyment of all
For issue 1, your best method of correction is to publish a 'So You Want to LAN Party with the Big Dogs' type web page or brochure. Get this to the folks who you are expecting to attend and make certain that they understand the necessary things:
- All NICs set to DHCP; if they don't know what this is provide a link to one of the bajillion sites on the web that document this
- All parts that should be brought with attendees (such as snacks, money for the conference room, pillows to crash when necessary, power strips/surge protectors,proper games, tables or chairs, etiquette expected, etc.)
- A rough schedule of events i.e. Diablo 2 from 9pm-3am followed by Counterstrike from 3am-3pm or whatever; nothing spoils a party quicker than someone coming who was expecting to play one game but then couldn't play.
For issue 2, make certain if you are using hotel facilities to have a conference room with multiple circuits!!! I may be using the wrong terminology but I once set up 18 rooms in a conference room near the Astrodome where the hotel electrician SWORE that there were multiple circuits but the first time the instructor asked everyone to open a certain document, the combined juice request from 18 hard drives overloaded the circuit and bamm-o, instant darkness. Good when you're with a chick but not so good when you want to slay some demons. Explain that you will be having X number of PCs and that continuous power is an important thing!
I know from experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped after the 3rd time.
1. The food sucked, they asked you prepay, and since I didn't have a credit card, I couldn't, so instead of ordering pizza with the money (the same amount the prepay guys paid to get it) that the guys who just showed up payed, they just got dicked over and starved.
2. If your going to set up FTP warez servers, have time limits. The staff at the lan was awsome, huge FTP server with tons of games movies and cartoons. BUT, it had a 10 person limit so that you got a high transfer rate, so basically the first 10 guys in the door would start downloading, and take all night downloading hundreds of gigs of stuff. I mean, it got a little redicoulas when the fat greasy guy next to me filled 2 hundred gig drives with shit he'd never use, like gigs of NES and SEGA roms or games I know he had because he was playing them, but was downloading the
3. Don't be afraid to kick someone out. The was this one guy (NOTE), who was a complete jack ass and ruined it for everyone. He would bitch and moan because he didn't have a game to play in a tournament, so would make everyone waite while he loaded and configured it, and then he'd bitch and say people cheated when he lost. Everyone hated him, but couldn't make him leave.
4. If your gonna have tournaments, have awards everyone can win. Instead of all time winner, how about...to compete you turn on replay mode, and then judge on the most gruesome death or most awsome kill shot, just don't let the geeky guy who does nothing but sit on his ass and play CS all day take home all the trophies.
5. Have a good sleeping area. Rent out a few hotel rooms if you do it there. The one I went to, it was just a big room, and you went in there, tons of people sleeping. I'd get into my sleeping bag (nylon goose down stuffed) and have people bitch at me because of the noise. I know it was loud, but I couldn't help it, and would have really like to be able to go somewhere by my self or with just friends.
Plus, have good security, I was really afraid to leave my computer alone while I slept, I actually use a bike chain and lock, and locked it to the desk. Even just an old laptop and a few USB webcams spread around would work.
5. Don't just play high end games, not everyone has that kind of CPU. Get some good strategy game tourneys going, like Alpha Centarui, or Civ 2 & 3, or even have a Quake 2 tournament.
I think everyone else hit the important stuff.
I dont know what youll need (Score:2)
lan parties (Score:2, Insightful)
prices may vary, i once paid ~23Euros for a 3 day lan party/demo party with internet access and a very huge screen (about 900 ppl were present, this was 6 years ago
To the last one i have participated, prices were more like 15Euros for a 2 day one (70 ppl, in a school), but think how many ppl will come, and how much it will cost to you to rent the place, and all other "debts", w
One thing you WON'T need is (Score:5, Funny)
Condoms.
Probably, like, not ever.
RRGC LAN Party (Score:2, Informative)
Know what you're jumping into. (Score:4, Informative)
1. Not being allowed to touch anything power related. Apparently unions have contracts which require you to hire them even for something as simple as plugging in a television
2. Unable to bring in external equipment. They might make you rent from them any one of a number of items: televisions, power strips, extension cords.
3. Not allowed to have snacks/drinks brought in.
Basically, read everything and make sure you don't get hosed with the fine print. Good luck.
Good idea from a friend (Score:4, Insightful)
A friend of mine does this fairly often and he uses multiple 24-port 10Mb switches with 100Mb uplinks into a single 100Mb switch. This has several benefits. 1) They're cheap. 2) 10Mb is more than enough for games. 3) If people want to trade files (and they will) it doesn't congest the switches and lag the network.
Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
The golden rule; Don´t get sued! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The golden rule; Don´t get sued! (Score:3, Informative)
It might be worth it to FORCE breas on people..
If you get one of these kiddies keeling over from E-thrombosis or just brain fried because they sat down and played 36 hours straight without taking a piss or stretching their legs once.. YOU will be up excrament creek when the parents sue you.
Tips & Pitfalls (Score:5, Informative)
Size
Make sure you have more than enough tables, chairs, and floor space for your attendees. I've seen attendance estimates very as much as 20%, and you never want to turn people away at the door, so always over-estimate your space requirements
Electricity
You'll have some attendees. who will bring machines that draw next to nothing, and others who will plug in giant subwoofers and space heaters. Spread your load over as many circuits as you can, and make sure you have plenty of thick-gauge extension cords.
Over a year ago, we ran an event at the local Masonic Temple. It's an old building, and some of us had power concerns from the start. Within two hours, we had run wires to every floor in the building, blown almost a dozen fuses, and destroyed the high-amp fuses on the main. (These fuses, circa 1936, were burned and torn in half)
Technical Support
Without fail, someone will set up, and their NIC won't work, their video card will fail, or they'll need to reinstall their OS. Chances are, you'll be enlisted to help resolve these situations.
Someone will forget a mouse/power cord/length of Cat5, so bring a few extra just in case. A decent percentage of attendees. won't have current patches for their games, so before hand, burn about a dozen CDs with patches for popular games, and hand them out as needed.
File Sharing
The biggest problem we've had to deal with recently comes from this department. When it comes to sexual content, we consider ourselves to be a PG-13 Lan Party. Until recently, we permitted the sharing of adult material, but we've had two recent incidents of inappropriate use. Now, we have a strict policy on the matter. Additionally, we've had problems with infected files/machines on the network. We still allow file sharing, but this may change if this problem continues.
If you do allow file sharing, you'll run into people that don't understand the concept of restricting their shares... You'll see entire hard drives with read & write permissions enabled. We haven't had anyone maliciously delete files off of someone's computer, but a few years ago, someone accidentally shared pictures of his naked wife lying in the bath. He was none too pleased to discover that the photo made the rounds.
Getting back to the inappropriate use subject... a few events ago, someone decided it would be a good idea to bring their LCD projector. Since we hold our event in an airplane hangar, it's pretty easy to set up a 20' screen. Sure enough, it only took a few hours before there were larger than life sexual acts being projected on the wall.
Other
Other than that, you'll run into issues about food & drink, sound (headphone requirements), tournaments, bathrooms, and trash. Use common sense, and these issues *usually* resolve themselves.
Liability Insurance and a Lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Assault. The "security" guys were guilty of assault. You can NOT even touch someone. You can demand they leave and call the police if they refuse, but don't lay a finger on them. You can go to jail for this type of stuff.
2. Destruction of private property. Throwing the persons computer with great force into the parking lot had the expected result of destroying the computer. This is definately a civil offense. It may be a criminal offense in some jurisdictions.
The people running the event could have been open for some serious litigation had the person persued the matter.
I'm not condoning cheaters. I agree that they should be removed from the event. The wrong tactics, however, can gurantee you can never sponser another event because of liability problems.
You want to make sure you have liability insurance so you don't get sued out of existence by some asshole who trips over his own feet and breaks his leg because he hasn't slept in 72 hours.
Prevent CGT (Score:5, Insightful)
To avoid this you should make sure that every hour or so people get up and around. We acheive this at our lan's through:
1 - BBQ, Softdrinks, water etc, and place them at least 20 meters away from the action. It forces people to get up and walk, and at the same time they also tend to wander.
2 - Make sure there is lots of cheap water (not just coke) available, as water prevents dehydration, and it stealthily encourages people to go to the loo... heheh nasty when in the middle of a tough cs WAR.... but it might save youre life.
3 - Ensure that there is pizza delivery, again, people need to stop gaming, get up, walk around etc.
This may sound silly, but CGT is a VERY serious problem, one that people have died from. We have all read the anecdotes on
DON'T USE FIBER! (Score:3, Interesting)
At the beginning of the day, the network was clean, no PL, no lag. By the end of the day, the game was all kinds of choppy (NetQuake, btw) and the PL was horrible.
Take it from me, USE COPPER ONLY. Especially today with the affordability of 100mbit ethernet. Gigabit switches/hubs are still expensive, but it is an option for the backbone.
-molo
Insurance (Score:3, Informative)
take it from someone who has helped put several on (Score:5, Informative)
we usually distribute power based on the assumption that each computer will use 4 amps. on a 20 amp circuit this means 4 computers (5x4=20, dont want to overload a circuit). you can get cheap 100' extension cords from walmart. put no more than 2 computers behind one (get some cheap power strips while you are at it). this works out well, it means you run 2 of these to a group of 4 computers (and there are 2 plugs on the outlet anyway). make sure you label EACH extension cord, on both ends. this is INFINATELY valueable when tracing down power problems. also make sure that you have a designated electrician who knows what circuits correspond to what outlets. DO NOT OVERLOAD a circuit. if you are hosting a 120 person event, assume you need 480 amps just for the players, not counting server row, consessions, lights, anything else. make sure you stay at or below 80% power usage for the facility you are at. you might look at getting power boxes or renting a generator from a local construction company. keep in mind generator power is not very clean nor natural to your pc. we got our power figures from lanwar, arguably one of the most successful regular lan parties in the usa. POWER IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION
second issue: food
decide up front if entry cost will be paying for any/all of the food for the gamer.
either see if you can get some stuff donated or on a discount, or just go buy generics. there are always decent generic brands that are alot cheaper than normal name brands. people at lan parties are not going to care that they are drinking vess or big k as long as its halfway decent and there is plenty of it. you might also see if you can get some kind of discount on catering by a local food place, such as subway or a pizza joint. use the "you can only take 1 sandwich" or "you can only take 2 slices of pie" rule until everyone has had an opportunity to go through the line.
third concern: networking
hopefully someone in your group will be a good networking tech. decide up front if you are going to allow file servers on server row (i would advise against, alot of wasted gaming bandwidth). my advice for the networkside is rent out some professionals. www.lanrental.com, i knwo these guys, they know what they are doing. in any event try to build out a network with low latency and not high bandwidth (if you can get both then great, but latency is more important for a game lan IMO, and i dont even game at the ones we throw).
fourth concern: parking
minor concern i admit, but still one to consider. make sure there is enough parking. try to make an area where noone can park but is used for loading/unloading. call the local authorities and tell them what you are doing and where you are doing it.
fifth concern: bathrooms.
make sure that the bathroom facilities are ample and work. this is especially important for multiday events. you might consider offering a location for the attendees to shower.
sixth concern: sleeping/chilling locale.
mark off an area for sleeping. sleeping under your computer with people walking over you sucks. set asside an area with a decent sized tv and vcr/dvd player or run a video projector. have alternate entertainment past the attendee's own pc.
seventh concern:
have people who are definately designated as in charge at all times. they should all wear the same shirt in a bright colour indicating they are event staff. always have someone on duty at a helpdesk or where they can be reached.
please mod this up, should be rather informative
Just incase (Score:3, Insightful)
Then incase someone gets the bright idead to start DOSing the server, you can find their MAC, set the dhcp server up to give him/her an ip on a completely different subnet that's not in use. That or block his/her IP or something to get rid of him/her. And depending on the switches you use, you can quite possibly track them down.
The likely hood of that happening is slim, but just incase.
One other thing, make sure you have a few people who know how to admin the server/maintain everything else around the room so you can get decent playing time in. I ran a lan party for our computer club at school, and the janitors got the bright idea to turn of the A/C that night. So I was busy running around the school most of the time trying to find fans and ways to keep the room cool. That night I didn't get in nearly as much playing time as I would have liked.
prepare to deal with the bane of IP networks... (Score:5, Informative)
Any sufficiently large LAN event will inevitably include attendees who for some reason run Windows 2000 Server with a DHCP Server Service configured. Without the proper tools, tracking these down can be a nightmare. Be prepared. Ideally, you'd have managed switches that can tell you what port a given MAC address is connected on, coupled with sniffers to tell you which MAC address is the source of the DHCP service. The DHCP protocol monitor plugin for Snort IDS can be used for this latter purpose (and Snort can also be used to detect hack attempts and DoS attempts).
These tools will also help in identifying conflicting IP addresses.
Security above all else! (Score:3, Insightful)
The last organised LAN I ever went to (over a year ago now), I was mugged afterwards at knife-point. I lost my mobile phone and wallet, but they didn't take my computer which I was standing next to. Most probably because of all the friends nearby, the mugging caught them off guard and they didn't react to it, but taking my computer would have had a fair few people coming to my assistance.
Later the police told me that the area where the party was held was one of the worst crime neighbourhoods in Adelaide. Apparently people get mugged in broad daylight. So although the hall would have been dirt cheap at that time of night, it really isn't the right place to hold a LAN.
Even though the organisers also had someone steal a 24-port switch, they still wouldn't move the venue. They practically covered the incident up. The other gamers to this day are unaware of what happened and has probably happened pretty regularly since. The organisers did hire some security guards to guard the cars, but my friend who still attends that party tells me that his car got broken into the very next time he went.
So my advice to you is this: imagine how you would feel if one of your friends, or one of their friends, were mugged at knife-point. Or worse, if their computer were stolen. Then you will make the right decision about the venue and any security issues.
Don't be half-arsed about it, it's better to have less food and no theft, than for the majority to be happier while one person has a really rotten night.
Deodorant! (Score:3, Funny)
From my experience (Score:3, Informative)
First, get measurements on the building/room you will be using and map out where you will want all of your tables. You can fit about 3 people per 8 foot folding table. Make sure to leave room for people to walk and have areas for the admins/servers and a checkin table by the door.
For power, my general rule of thumb seems to be about 3 Amps/system. We run 6 systems per 20 amp circuit (117 VAC) in our building without any problems. To get gamers to connect to the right circuits, first map out which circuit every outlet in the room(s) is on. Then, run a fairly heavy duty extension cord from one outlet on each circuit to a group of tables and stick a power strip on the end of it. (use the map to figure cable lengths) Then, just tell gamers to plug into the power strip at their table and things should go pretty well. If you want more info on power usage by computers check this study out: http://www.fwgg.org/files/FWGG_POWER_TEST.pdf
For networking, just go to pricewatch.com and find some cheap 16 port 10/100 switches with uplink ports. They are ~$50 each. Bigger switches require gamers to have really long cables to connect to switches. Smaller switches require too many uplinks to the certral switch. Anyway, you will be able to plug 15 boxes into each switch (1 is used for the uplink) and uplink all of the switches into a central switch that you also plug the servers into (again 16 port should be fine unless you have more than 150 people or a lot of servers).
Once you have all of your switches, go on ebay and buy a reel or two of stranded cat 5 cable, a hundred or so rj45 plugs and crimper and wire stripper. Get a bunch of friends together and make your uplink cables plus a few more cables of whatever size you want in case you need them. Use your map to plan out where each switch needs to be and don't forget to add length for running from the table to the floor/ceiling.
It is really handy to have a dhcp/dns server on your network for easy client setup and to make it easy for gamers to get to stats pages (ie. set a default subdomain and give each server its own dns name in the given subdomain. Then to see your counter-strike stats, gamers can just open up their web browser and type cstrike).
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned that is really nice is a PA system. Being able to crank up the volume and announce tournies, etc is much easier than trying to yell at everybody.
Finally, a central web/file server with current info about your LAN party and torunaments if you have them is also nice.
Finally, check out http://www.nerdclub.net/alp/index.php for some nice LAN party management software.
Console games! (Score:3, Insightful)
Staffing & power, redux. (Score:3, Informative)
You need a dedicated network person who only handles issues as they arise, this person can also handle the power load. This person does not need to deal with troubleshooting of PCs because....
You need a few volunteers to get PCs up and running on the network in the first few hours. Ideally, have spare cables and one NIC available for sale (but don't make them cheap, the poor sods deserve it) for the one awkward guys that won't have a proper NIC.
Power:
Prepare the distribution "network" ahead of time and make sure that the different sections are really on their own breakers and not overlapping with those 60 feet away. Providing the initial plug in points limits within 10-15 feets from their anticipated usage point helps control the load on the circuits.
DO NOT under ANY circumstances allo unrestricted access to any wall/floor outlet that is not designated for end users. Tape them over.
All cable snaking on the floor should be taped over, many cables running parallel should be grouped and run under those special ramps that let people walk on them.
Have an extra long extension and duct tape to tape it to the ground. This is to run alternate power to an underpowered cluster of PCs from a place with spare juice. It comes in handy, especially if 10 guys with 3-4 HDs, 21" screens and 5.1 speaker set up all gather nearby, you know like a clan
Misc:
Written policies for thefth, damage, injury, cheating, minimum age, etc. Trash and trash extraction. Facility cleaning and maintenance. Food, Beverages, Bar (and license if you have one) and other things need to be planned out. This means hoodles of soft drinks, whatever you can come up for decent food, etc. Bars are problematic and most venues that will let you have one (hotels) will insist on running it.
Badges are great, tee shirts for staffers and volunteers are awesome. Prizes should be PC/Gaming related, either games, graphics card, speakers, mices, gift certificates for electronics stores, mp3 players... Bonus for anything given by a sponsor.
Re:Here's a hint... (Score:2)
And you post that on Slashdot, of all places...Calling the kettle just a bit black, aren't you, Mr. Anonymous?
Re:Here's a hint... (Score:2)
Re:its all abouit the... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Here's an idea.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says all they do is game?
Afterall they're going to great effort to put on an event they'll like and it's going to take a shitload of work and education to get there.
This is well beyond 'just gaming'
They sound a lot more intelligent then your schoolmates that can't hold a decent job.
Re:Power (Score:3, Interesting)